History of television
Encyclopedia
The history of television records the work of numerous engineers and inventors in several countries over many decades. The fundamental principles of television
were initially explored using electromechanical methods to scan, transmit and reproduce an image. As electronic camera and display tubes were perfected, electromechanical television gave way to all-electronic broadcast television system
s in nearly all applications.
The beginnings of mechanical television can be traced back to the discovery of the photoconductivity
of the element selenium
by Willoughby Smith
in 1873, the invention of a scanning disk
by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow
in 1884 and John Logie Baird
's demonstration of televised moving images in 1926.
As a 23-year-old German university student, Paul Nipkow proposed and patented the first electromechanical television system in 1884. Although he never built a working model of the system, variations of Nipkow's spinning-disk "image rasterizer" for television became exceedingly common, and remained in use until 1939. Constantin Perskyi
had coined the word television in a paper read to the International Electricity Congress at the International World Fair
in Paris
on August 25, 1900. Perskyi's paper reviewed the existing electromechanical technologies, mentioning the work of Nipkow and others.
However, it was not until 1907 that developments in amplification tube technology, by Lee DeForest and Arthur Korn
among others, made the design practical. The first demonstration of the instantaneous transmission of still silhouette images was by Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris in 1909, using a rotating mirror-drum as the scanner and a matrix of 64 selenium cells as the receiver.
In 1911, Boris Rosing
and his student Vladimir Zworykin
created a television system that used a mechanical mirror-drum scanner to transmit, in Zworykin's words, "very crude images" over wires to the "Braun
tube" (cathode ray tube
or "CRT") in the receiver. Moving images were not possible because, in the scanner, "the sensitivity was not enough and the selenium
cell was very laggy".
On March 25, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird
gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette
images in motion, at Selfridge's
Department Store in London. AT&T
's Bell Telephone Laboratories transmitted halftone
still images of transparencies in May 1925. On June 13 of that year, Charles Francis Jenkins
transmitted the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion, over a distance of five miles from a naval radio station in Maryland to his laboratory in Washington
, using a lensed disk scanner with a 48-line resolution.
However, if television is defined as the live transmission of moving images with continuous tonal variation, Baird first achieved this privately on October 2, 1925. But strictly speaking, Baird had not yet achieved moving images on October 2. His scanner worked at only five images per second, below the threshold required to give the illusion of motion, usually defined as at least 12 images per second. By January, he had improved the scan rate to 12.5 images per second.
Then on January 26th, 1926 at his laboratory in London, Baird gave what is widely recognized as being the world's first demonstration of a working television system to members of the Royal Institution
and a newspaper reporter.
Unlike later electronic systems with several hundred lines of resolution
, Baird's vertically scanned image, using a scanning disk embedded with a double spiral of lenses, had only 30 lines, just enough to reproduce a recognizable human face.
In 1927, Baird transmitted a signal over 438 miles (704.9 km) of telephone line between London and Glasgow
. In 1928, Baird's company (Baird Television Development Company/Cinema Television) broadcast the first transatlantic television signal, between London and New York, and the first shore-to-ship transmission. He also demonstrated an electromechanical color, infrared
(dubbed "Noctovision"), and stereoscopic
television, using additional lenses, disks and filters. In parallel, Baird developed a video disk recording system dubbed "Phonovision
"; a number of the Phonovision recordings, dating back to 1927, still exist. In 1929, he became involved in the first experimental electromechanical television service in Germany. In November of the same year, Baird and Bernard Natan
of Pathé
established France's first television
company, Télévision-Baird
-Natan. In 1931, he made the first outdoor remote broadcast, of the Epsom Derby
. In 1932, he demonstrated ultra-short wave television. Baird's electromechanical system reached a peak of 240-lines of resolution on BBC
television broadcasts in 1936 though the mechanical system did not scan the televised scene directly. Instead a 17.5mm film was shot, rapidly developed and then scanned while the film was still wet. On 2 November 1936 the BBC
began transmitting the world's first public television service from the Victorian Alexandra Palace
in north London. following alternate daily test broadcasts of the Baird and Marconi systems to the Radio Show at Olympia at the end of August It therefore claims to be the birthplace of television broadcasting as we know it today. The intermediate film system
was discontinued within three months in favour of a 405-line all-electronic system developed by Marconi-EMI
.
Herbert E. Ives
and Frank Gray
of Bell Telephone Laboratories gave a dramatic demonstration of mechanical television on April 7, 1927. The reflected-light television system included both small and large viewing screens. The small receiver had a two-inch-wide by 2.5-inch-high screen. The large receiver had a screen 24 inches wide by 30 inches high. Both sets were capable of reproducing reasonably accurate, monochromatic moving images. Along with the pictures, the sets also received synchronized sound. The system transmitted images over two paths: first, a copper wire link from Washington
to New York City, then a radio link from Whippany, New Jersey
. Comparing the two transmission methods, viewers noted no difference in quality. Subjects of the telecast included Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover
. A flying-spot scanner beam illuminated these subjects. The scanner that produced the beam had a 50-aperture disk. The disc revolved at a rate of 18 frames per second, capturing one frame about every 56 millisecond
s. (Today's systems typically transmit 30 or 60 frames per second, or one frame every 33.3 or 16.7 milliseconds respectively.) Television historian Albert Abramson underscored the significance of the Bell Labs demonstration: "It was in fact the best demonstration of a mechanical television system ever made to this time. It would be several years before any other system could even begin to compare with it in picture quality."
Meanwhile in the Soviet Union
, Léon Theremin
had been developing a mirror drum-based television, starting with 16 lines resolution in 1925, then 32 lines and eventually 64 using interlacing in 1926, and as part of his thesis on May 7, 1926 he electrically transmitted and then projected near-simultaneous moving images on a five foot square screen. By 1927 he achieved an image of 100 lines, a resolution that was not surpassed until 1931 by RCA, with 120 lines.
On December 25, 1926, Kenjiro Takayanagi
demonstrated a television system with a 40-line resolution that employed a Nipkow disk scanner and CRT display at Hamamatsu Industrial High School in Japan. This protype is still on display at the Takayanagi Memorial Museum in Shizuoka University
, Hamamatsu Campus. His research in creating a production model were halted by the US after Japan lost World War II
.
Mechanical scanning systems, though obsolete for the more familiar television systems, nevertheless survive in long wave infra red cameras because there is no suitable all-electronic pickup device.
, fellow of the Royal Society
(UK), published a letter in the scientific journal Nature
in which he described how "distant electric vision" could be achieved by using a cathode ray tube
(or "Braun" tube, after its inventor, Karl Braun) as both a transmitting and receiving device, apparently the first iteration of the electronic television method that would dominate the field until recently. He expanded on his vision in a speech given in London in 1911 and reported in The Times
and the Journal of the Röntgen Society. In a letter to Nature
published in October 1926, Campbell-Swinton also announced the results of some "not very successful experiments" he had conducted with G. M. Minchin and J. C. M. Stanton. They had attempted to generate an electrical signal by projecting an image onto a selenium-coated metal plate that was simultaneously scanned by a cathode ray beam
. These experiments were conducted before March 1914, when Minchin died, but they were later repeated by two different teams in 1937, by H. Miller and J. W. Strange from EMI
, and by H. Iams and A. Rose from RCA
. Both teams succeeded in transmitting "very faint" images with the original Campbell-Swinton's selenium-coated plate. Although others had experimented with using a cathode ray tube as a receiver, the concept of using one as a transmitter was novel. By the late 1920s, when electromechanical television was still being introduced, several inventors were already working separately on versions of all-electronic transmitting tubes, including Philo Farnsworth
and Vladimir Zworykin
in the United States
, and Kálmán Tihanyi
in Hungary
.
On September 7, 1927, Farnsworth's Image Dissector
camera tube transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, at his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco. By September 3, 1928, Farnsworth had developed the system sufficiently to hold a demonstration for the press. In 1929, the system was further improved by elimination of a motor generator, so that his television system now had no mechanical parts. That year, Farnsworth transmitted the first live human images with his system, including a three and a half-inch image of his wife Elma ("Pem") with her eyes closed (possibly due to the bright lighting required).
Meanwhile, Vladimir Zworykin
was also experimenting with the cathode ray tube to create and show images. While working for Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1923, he began to develop an electronic camera tube. But in a 1925 demonstration, the image was dim, had low contrast and poor definition, and was stationary. Zworykin's imaging tube never got beyond the laboratory stage. But RCA, which acquired the Westinghouse patent, asserted that the patent for Farnsworth's 1927 image dissector was written so broadly that it would exclude any other electronic imaging device. Thus RCA, on the basis of Zworykin's 1923 patent application, filed a patent interference suit against Farnsworth. The U.S. Patent Office
examiner disagreed in a 1935 decision, finding priority of invention for Farnsworth against Zworykin. Farnsworth claimed that Zworykin's 1923 system would be unable to produce an electrical image of the type to challenge his patent. Zworykin received a patent in 1928 for a color transmission version of his 1923 patent application, he also divided his original application in 1931. Zworykin was unable or unwilling to introduce evidence of a working model of his tube that was based on his 1923 patent application. In September 1939, after losing an appeal in the courts and determined to go forward with the commercial manufacturing of television equipment, RCA agreed to pay Farnsworth US$1 million (the equivalent of $13.8 million in 2006) over a ten-year period, in addition to license payments, to use Farnsworth's patents.
The problem of low sensitivity to light resulting in low electrical output from transmitting or "camera" tubes would be solved by Tihanyi beginning in 1924. His solution was a camera tube that accumulated and stored electrical charges ("photoelectrons") within the tube throughout each scanning cycle. The device was first described in a patent application he filed in Hungary
in March 1926 for a television system he dubbed "Radioskop". After further refinements included in a 1928 patent application, Tihanyi was awarded patents for the camera tube in both France and Great Britain in 1928, and applied for patents in the United States in June of the following year. Although his breakthrough would be incorporated into the design of RCA
's "iconoscope
" in 1931, the U.S. patent for Tihanyi's transmitting tube would not be granted until May 1939. The patent for his receiving tube had been granted the previous October. Both patents had been purchased by RCA prior to their approval. The idea of charge & storage (with various and very different technological solutions) is still remained as a basic requirement for all type of modern image sensors until this day.
Development continued around the world. At the Berlin Radio Show in August 1931, Manfred von Ardenne
gave a public demonstration of a television system using a CRT for both transmission and reception. However, Ardenne had not developed a camera tube, using the CRT instead as a flying-spot scanner to scan slides and film. Philo Farnsworth gave the world's first public demonstration of an all-electronic television system, using a live camera, at the Franklin Institute
of Philadelphia on August 25, 1934, and for ten days afterwards.
In 1933 RCA introduced an improved camera tube that relied on Tihanyi's charge storage principle. Dubbed the Iconoscope by Zworykin, the new tube had a light sensitivity of about 75,000 lux, and thus was claimed to be much more sensitive than Farnsworth's image dissector. However, Farnsworth had overcome his power problems with his Image Dissector through the invention of a completely unique "multipactor" device that he began work on in 1930, and demonstrated in 1931. This small tube could amplify a signal reportedly to the 60th power or better and showed great promise in all fields of electronics. A problem with the multipactor, unfortunately, was that it wore out at an unsatisfactory rate.
In Britain the EMI
engineering team led by Isaac Shoenberg
applied in 1932 for a patent for a new device they dubbed "the Emitron", which formed the heart of the cameras they designed for the BBC. On November 2, 1936, a 405-line broadcasting service employing the Emitron began at studios in Alexandra Palace
, and transmitted from a specially-built mast atop one of the Victorian building's towers. It alternated for a short time with Baird's mechanical system in adjoining studios, but was more reliable and visibly superior. This was the world's first regular high-definition television service.
The original American iconoscope was noisy, had a high ratio of interference to signal, and ultimately gave disappointing results, especially when compared to the high definition mechanical scanning systems then becoming available. The EMI
team under the supervision of Isaac Shoenberg
analyzed how the iconoscope (or Emitron) produces an electronic signal and concluded that its real efficiency was only about 5% of the theoretical maximum. They solved this problem by developing and patenting in 1934 two new camera tubes dubbed super-Emitron and CPS Emitron. The super-Emitron was between ten and fifteen times more sensitive than the original Emitron and iconoscope tubes and, in some cases, this ratio was considerably greater. It was used for an outside broadcasting
by the BBC, for the first time, on Armistice Day 1937, when the general public could watch in a television set how the King lay a wreath at the Cenotaph. This was the first time that anyone could broadcast a live street scene from cameras installed on the roof of neighbor buildings, because neither Farnsworth nor RCA could do the same before the 1939 New York World's Fair
.
On the other hand, in 1934, Zworykin shared some patent rights with the German licensee company Telefunken. The "image iconoscope" ("Superikonoskop" in Germany) was produced as a results of the collaboration. This tube is essentially identical to the super-Emitron. The production and commercialization of the super-Emitron and image iconoscope in Europe were not affected by the patent war between Zworykin and Farnsworth, because Dieckmann and Hell had priority in Germany for the invention of the image dissector, having submitted a patent application for their Lichtelektrische Bildzerlegerröhre für Fernseher (Photoelectric Image Dissector Tube for Television) in Germany in 1925, two years before Farnsworth did the same in the United States. The image iconoscope (Superikonoskop) became the industrial standard for public broadcasting
in Europe from 1936 until 1960, when it was replaced by the vidicon and plumbicon tubes. Indeed it was the representative of the European tradition in electronic tubes competing against the American tradition represented by the image orthicon. The German company Heimann produced the Superikonoskop for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, later Heimann also produced and commercialized it from 1940 to 1955, finally the Dutch company Philips
produced and commercialized the image iconoscope and multicon from 1952 to 1958.
American television broadcasting at the time consisted of a variety of markets in a wide range of sizes, each competing for programming and dominance with separate technology, until deals were made and standards agreed upon in 1941. RCA, for example, used only Iconoscopes in the New York area, but Farnsworth Image Dissectors in Philadelphia and San Francisco. In September 1939, RCA agreed to pay the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation royalties over the next ten years for access to Farnsworth's patents. With this historic agreement in place, RCA integrated much of what was best about the Farnsworth Technology into their systems.
In 1941, the United States implemented 525-line television. The world's first 625-line television standard was designed in the Soviet Union in 1944, and became a national standard in 1946. The first broadcast in 625-line standard occurred in 1948 in Moscow. The concept of 625 lines per frame was subsequently implemented in the European CCIR
standard.
by television station
s, sometimes called "channels", as stations are licensed
by their governments to broadcast only over assigned channels
in the television band. At first, terrestrial broadcasting
was the only way television could be widely distributed, and because bandwidth was limited, i.e., there were only a small number of channels
available, government regulation was the norm.
In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) allowed stations to broadcast advertisements beginning in July of 1941, but required public service programming commitments as a requirement for a license. By contrast, the United Kingdom chose a different route, imposing a television license fee on owners of television reception equipment to fund the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which had public service as part of its Royal Charter
.
radio transmitter in September 1929. Baird provided a limited amount of programming five days a week by 1930. During this time, Southampton earned the distinction of broadcasting the first-ever live television interview, which featured Peggy O'Neil, an actress and singer from Buffalo, New York
. On August 22, 1932, BBC launched its own regular service using Baird's 30-line electromechanical system, continuing until September 11, 1935. On November 2, 1936 the BBC began broadcasting a dual-system service, alternating between Marconi-EMI's 405-line
standard and Baird's improved 240-line standard, from Alexandra Palace
in London, making the BBC Television Service (now BBC One
) the world's first regular high-definition television service. The government, on advice from a special advisory committee, decided that Marconi-EMI's electronic system gave the superior picture, and the Baird system was dropped in February 1937. TV broadcasts in London were on the air an average of four hours daily from 1936 to 1939. There were 12,000 to 15,000 receivers. Some sets in restaurants or bars might have 100 viewers for sport events (Dunlap, p56).The outbreak of the Second World War caused the BBC service to be suspended without warning on September 1, 1939, mid-way through a Mickey Mouse
cartoon. It resumed, again from Alexandra Palace, after the end of the war on June 7, 1946 showing the same cartoon. At the end of 1947 there were 54,000 licensed television receivers, compared with 44,000 television sets in the United States at that time.
The first transatlantic television signal was sent in 1928 from London to New York by the Baird Television Development Company/Cinema Television, although this signal was not broadcast to the public. The first live satellite signal to Britain from the United States was broadcast via the Telstar
satellite on July 23, 1962.
The first live broadcast from the European continent was made on August 27, 1950.
authorized C.F. Jenkins
to broadcast from experimental station W3XK in Wheaton Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.
For at least the first eighteen months, 48-line silhouette images from motion picture film were broadcast, although beginning in the summer of 1929 he occasionally broadcast in halftones.
Hugo Gernsback
's New York City radio station began a regular, if limited, schedule of live television
broadcasts on August 14, 1928, using 48-line images. Working with only one transmitter, the station alternated radio broadcasts with silent television images of the station's call sign
, faces in motion, and wind-up toys in motion. Speaking later that month, Gernsback downplayed the broadcasts, intended for amateur experimenters. "In six months we may have television for the public, but so far we have not got it." Gernsback also published Television, the world's first magazine about the medium.
General Electric
's experimental station in Schenectady, New York
, on the air sporadically since January 13, 1928, was able to broadcast reflected-light, 48-line images via shortwave
as far as Los Angeles
, and by September was making four television broadcasts weekly. It is considered to be the direct predecessor of current television station WRGB
. The Queen's Messenger, a one-act play broadcast on September 11, 1928, was the world's first live drama on television.
Radio giant RCA
began daily experimental television broadcasts in New York City in March 1929 over station W2XBS. The 60-line transmissions consisted of pictures, signs, and views of persons and objects. Experimental broadcasts continued to 1931.
General Broadcasting System's WGBS radio and W2XCR television aired their regular broadcasting debut in New York City on April 26, 1931, with a special demonstration set up in Aeolian Hall at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street. Thousands waited to catch a glimpse of the Broadway stars who appeared on the six-inch (15 cm) square image, in an evening event to publicize a weekday programming schedule offering films and live entertainers during the four-hour daily broadcasts. Appearing were boxer Primo Carnera
, actors Gertrude Lawrence
, Louis Calhern
, Frances Upton
and Lionel Atwill
, WHN announcer Nils Granlund
, the Forman Sisters, and a host of others.
CBS
's New York City station W2XAB began broadcasting their first regular seven days a week television schedule on July 21, 1931, with a 60-line electromechanical system. The first broadcast included Mayor Jimmy Walker
, the Boswell Sisters, Kate Smith
, and George Gershwin
. The service ended in February 1933. Don Lee Broadcasting
's station W6XAO in Los Angeles went on the air in December 1931. Using the UHF
spectrum, it broadcast a regular schedule of filmed images every day except Sundays and holidays for several years.
By 1935, low-definition electromechanical television broadcasting had ceased in the United States except for a handful of stations run by public universities that continued to 1939. The Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) saw television in the continual flux of development with no consistent technical standards, hence all such stations in the U.S. were granted only experimental and non-commercial
licenses, hampering television's economic development. Just as importantly, Philo Farnsworth's August 1934 demonstration of an all-electronic system at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia pointed out the direction of television's future.
On June 15, 1936, Don Lee Broadcasting began a one month-long demonstration of high definition (240+ line) television in Los Angeles on W6XAO (later KTSL
) with a 300-line image from motion picture film. By October, W6XAO was making daily television broadcasts of films. RCA
and its subsidiary NBC
demonstrated in New York City a 343-line electronic television broadcast, with live and film segments, to its licensees on July 7, 1936, and made its first public demonstration to the press on November 6. Irregularly scheduled broadcasts continued through 1937 and 1938. Regularly scheduled electronic broadcasts began in April 1938 in New York (to the second week of June, and resuming in August) and Los Angeles. NBC officially began regularly scheduled television broadcasts in New York on April 30, 1939 with a broadcast of the opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair
. By June 1939, regularly scheduled 441-line electronic television broadcasts were available in New York City and Los Angeles, and by November on General Electric's station in Schenectady. From May through December 1939, the New York City NBC station (W2XBS) of General Electric broadcast twenty to fifty-eight hours of programming per month, Wednesday through Sunday of each week. The programming was 33% news, 29% drama, and 17% educational programming, with an estimated 2,000 receiving sets by the end of the year, and an estimated audience of five to eight thousand. A remote truck could cover outdoor events from up to 10 miles (16.1 km) away from the transmitter, which was located atop the Empire State Building
. Coaxial cable was used to cover events at Madison Square Garden
. The coverage area for reliable reception was a radius of 40 to 50 miles (80.5 km) from the Empire State Building, an area populated by more than 10,000,000 people (Lohr, 1940).
The FCC adopted NTSC
television engineering standards on May 2, 1941, calling for 525 lines of vertical resolution, 30 frames per second with interlaced scanning, 60 fields per second, and sound carried by frequency modulation
. Sets sold since 1939 which were built for slightly lower resolution could still be adjusted to receive the new standard. (Dunlap, p31). The FCC saw television ready for commercial licensing, and the first such licenses were issued to NBC and CBS owned stations in New York on July 1, 1941, followed by Philco
's station WPTZ
in Philadelphia
. The first advertising to appear on American television occurred on the afternoon of July 1, 1941 when New York NBC station WNBT, now WNBC
, broadcast a test pattern modified to look like a clock, with the words "Bulova Watch Time" in the lower right quadrant. Picture at: http://www.earlytelevision.org/images/rca_bulova_ad-1.jpg link title The image appeared just prior to that afternoon's telecast of a Brooklyn Dodgers game live from Ebbets Field. After the U.S. entry into World War II
, the FCC reduced the required minimum air time for commercial television stations from 15 hours per week to 4 hours. Most TV stations suspended broadcasting. On the few that remained, programs included entertainment such as boxing and plays, events at Madison Square Garden, and illustrated war news as well as training for air raid wardens and first aid providers. In 1942, there were 5,000 sets in operation, but production of new TVs, radios, and other broadcasting equipment for civilian purposes was suspended from April 1942 to August 1945 (Dunlap).
By 1947, when there were 40 million radios in the U.S., there were about 44,000 television sets (with probably 30,000 in the New York area). Regular network television
broadcasts began on NBC
on a three-station network linking New York with the Capital District and Philadelphia in 1944; on the DuMont Television Network
in 1946, and on CBS
and ABC
in 1948. By 1949, the networks stretched from New York to the Mississippi River
, and by 1951 to the West Coast. Commercial color television
broadcasts began on CBS in 1951 with a field-sequential color system
that was suspended four months later for technical and economic reasons. The television industry's National Television System Committee
developed a color television system based on RCA technology that was compatible with existing black and white receivers, and commercial color broadcasts reappeared in 1953.
(CBC) adopted the American NTSC
525-line B/W 60 field per second system as its broadcast standard. It began television broadcasting in Canada in September 1952. The first broadcast was on September 6, 1952 from its Montreal
, Quebec
station CBFT
. The premiere broadcast was bilingual, spoken in English and French. Two days later, on September 8, 1952, the Toronto, Ontario
station CBLT went on the air. This became the English-speaking flagship station for the country, while CBFT became the French language flagship after a second English language station was licensed to CBC in Montreal later in the decade. The CBC’s first privately owned affiliate television station, CKSO
in Sudbury, Ontario, launched in October 1953 (at the time, all private stations were expected to affiliate with the CBC, a condition that was relaxed in 1960–61 when CTV, Canada's second national English language network, was formed).
In November 1929, Bernard Natan
established France's first television company, Télévision-Baird
-Natan. On April 14, 1931, there took place the first transmission with a thirty-line standard by René Barthélemy. On December 6, 1931, Henri de France
created the Compagnie Générale de Télévision (CGT). In December 1932, Bathélemy carried out an experimental program in black and white (definition: 60 lines) one hour per week, "Paris Télévision", which gradually became daily from early 1933.
The first official channel of French television appeared on February 13, 1935, the date of the official inauguration of television in France, which was broadcast in 60 lines from 8:15 to 8:30 pm. The program showed the actress Béatrice Bretty in the studio of Radio-PTT Vision at 103 rue de Grenelle in Paris. The broadcast had a range of 100 km (62.1 mi). On November 10, George Mandel
, Minister of Posts, inaugurated the first broadcast in 180 lines from the transmitter of the Eiffel tower
. On the 18th, Susy Wincker, the first announcer since the previous June, carried out a demonstration for the press from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Broadcasts became regular from January 4, 1937 from 11:00 to 11:30 am and 8:00 to 8:30 pm during the week, and from 5:30 to 7:30 pm on Sundays. In July 1938, a decree defined for three years a standard of 455 lines VHF (whereas three standards were used for the experiments: 441 lines for Gramont, 450 lines for the Compagnie des Compteurs and 455 for Thomson). In 1939, there were about only 200 to 300 individual television sets, some of which were also available in a few public places.
With the entry of France into World War II
the same year, broadcasts ceased and the transmitter of the Eiffel tower
was sabotaged. On September 3, 1940, French television was seized by the German occupation forces. A technical agreement was signed by the Compagnie des Compteurs and Telefunken
, and a financing agreement for the resuming of the service is signed by German Ministry of Post and Radiodiffusion Nationale (Vichy
's radio). On May 7, 1943 at 3:00 evening broadcasts. The first broadcast of Fernsehsender Paris (Paris Télévision) was transmitted from rue Cognac-Jay. These regular broadcasts (5 1/4 hours a day) lasted until August 16, 1944. One thousand 441-line sets, most of which were installed in soldiers' hospitals, picked up the broadcasts. These Nazi-controlled television broadcasts from the Eiffel Tower in Paris were able to be received on the south coast of England by R.A.F. and BBC engineers http://www.earlytelevision.org/raf.html link title, who photographed the station identification image direct from the screen http://www.earlytelevision.org/images/parisnazitransmitter.jpg link title
In 1944, René Barthélemy developed an 819-line television standard. During the years of occupation, Barthélemy reached 1015 and even 1042 lines. On October 1, 1944, television service resumed after the liberation of Paris
. The broadcasts were transmitted from the Cognacq-Jay studios. In October 1945, after repairs, the transmitter of the Eiffel Tower
was back in service. On November 20, 1948, Mitterrand
decreed a broadcast standard of 819 lines; broadcasting began at the end of 1949 in this definition. France was the only European country to adopt it (others will choose 625 lines).
using telecine
transmission of film, intermediate film system
, or cameras using the Nipkow Disk. Transmissions using cameras based on the iconoscope
began on January 15, 1936. The Berlin Summer Olympic Games
were televised, using both all-electronic iconoscope-based cameras and intermediate film cameras, to Berlin and Hamburg
in August 1936. Twenty-eight public television rooms were opened for anybody who did not own a television set. The Germans had a 441-line system on the air in February 1937, and during World War II
brought it to France, where they broadcast from the Eiffel Tower
.
The American Armed Forces Radio Network
at the end of World War II, wishing to provide US TV programming to the occupation forces in Germany, used US TV receivers made to operate at 525 lines and 60 fields. US broadcast equipment was modified; they changed the vertical frequency to 50 Hz in accordance to the European mains frequency standard to avoid power line wiggles, changed the horizontal frequency from 15,750 Hz to 15,625 Hz a 0.5 microsecond change in the length of a line. With this signal, US TV receivers with only an adjustment to the vertical hold control had a 625 line (= 576 visual lines + 49 lines of non-visual synch and burst data), 50 field scan, which became the German standard. This AFN system, however, was not the later PAL
standard native to Germany, as the displays themselves were not capable of displaying any more than the standard NTSC 486 visual lines, which effectively were even only 243 visible lines due to display-internal deinterlacing
by means of alternatively discarding one field and applying line doubling on the result. Additionally, it still took until the 1960s for the PAL-specific YUV
color system to be invented by Walter Bruch
, with PAL operating at 576 visual lines.
began offering 30-line electromechanical test broadcasts in Moscow on October 31, 1931, and a commercially manufactured television set in 1932.
The first experimental transmissions of electronic television took place in Moscow on March 9, 1937, using equipment manufactured and installed by RCA
. Regular broadcasting began on December 31, 1938. It was quickly realized that 343 lines of resolution offered by this format would have become insufficient in the long run, thus a specification for 441-line format was developed in 1940, superseded by a 625-line standard in 1944. This format was ultimately accepted as a national standard.
The experimental transmissions in 625-line format started in Moscow from November 4, 1948. Regular broadcasting began on June 16, 1949. Details for this standard were formalized in 1955 specification called GOST 7845-55, basic parameters for black-and-white television broadcast. In particular, frame size was set to 625 lines, frame rate to 25 frames/s interlaced, and video bandwidth to 6 MHz. These basic parameters were accepted by most countries having 50 Hz mains frequency and became the foundation of television systems presently known as PAL
and SECAM.
Starting from 1951 broadcasting in the 625-line standard was introduced in other major cities of the Soviet Union.
Color television broadcast started in 1974, using SECAM color system.
ming.
Sony first demonstrated an wideband analog high-definition television system HDTV capable video camera, monitor and video tape recorder
(VTR) in April of 1981 at an international meeting of television engineers in Algiers
. The HDVS range was launched in April 1984, with the HDC-100 camera, HDV-100 video recorder and HDS-100 video switcher all working in the 1125-line component video
format with interlaced video and a 5:3 aspect ratio.
broadcast in the U.S. took place on September 4, 1951 when President Harry Truman
's speech at the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference
in San Francisco, California
was transmitted over AT&T
's transcontinental cable
and microwave radio relay system to broadcast stations in local markets.
The first live coast-to-coast commercial television broadcast in the U.S. took place on November 18, 1951 during the premiere of CBS
's See It Now
, which showed a split-screen view of the Brooklyn Bridge
in New York City and the Golden Gate Bridge
in San Francisco. In 1958, the CBC
completed the longest television network in the world, from Sydney, Nova Scotia
to Victoria, British Columbia
. Reportedly, the first continuous live broadcast of a "breaking" news story in the world was conducted by the CBC during the Springhill Mining Disaster
, which began on October 23 of that year.
The development of cable and satellite television
in the 1970s allowed for more channels and encouraged businessmen to target programming toward specific audiences. It also enabled the rise of subscription television channels, such as Home Box Office (HBO)
and Showtime in the U.S., and Sky Television
in the U.K.
tube behind a mechanically spinning disk (the Nipkow disk
) with a spiral of apertures that produced a red postage-stamp size image, enlarged to twice that size by a magnifying glass. The Baird "Televisor" was also available without the radio. The Televisor sold in 1930–1933 is considered the first mass-produced set, selling about a thousand units.
The first commercially made electronic television sets with cathode ray tube
s were manufactured by Telefunken
in Germany in 1934, followed by other makers in France (1936), Britain (1936), and America (1938). The cheapest of the pre-World War II factory-made American sets, a 1938 image-only model with a 3-inch (8 cm) screen, cost US$
125, the equivalent of US$
1,863 in 2007. The most expensive model with a 12-inch (30 cm) screen was $445 ($6,633).
An estimated 19,000 electronic television sets were manufactured in Britain, and about 1,600 in Germany, before World War II. About 7,000–8,000 electronic sets were made in the U.S. before the War Production Board
halted manufacture in April 1942, production resuming in August 1945.
Television usage in the United States skyrocketed after World War II
with the lifting of the manufacturing freeze, war-related technological advances, the gradual expansion of the television networks westward, the drop in set prices caused by mass production, increased leisure time, and additional disposable income. In 1947, Motorola introduced the VT-71 television for $189.95, the first television set to be sold for under $200, finally making television affordable for millions of Americans. While only 0.5% of U.S. households had a television set in 1946, 55.7% had one in 1954, and 90% by 1962. In Britain, there were 15,000 television households in 1947, 1.4 million in 1952, and 15.1 million by 1968.
For many years different countries used different technical standards. France initially adopted the German 441-line standard but later upgraded to 819 lines, which gave the highest picture definition of any analogue TV system, approximately double the resolution of the British 405-line system. However this is not without a cost, in that the cameras need to produce four times the pixel rate (thus quadrupling the bandwidth), from pixels one-quarter the size, reducing the sensitivity by an equal amount. In practice the 819-line cameras never achieved anything like the resolution that could theoretically be transmitted by the 819 line system, and for color, France reverted to the 625-line CCIR
system used by most European countries.
With advent of color television most Western European countries adopted PAL
standard. France, Soviet Union and most Eastern European countries adopted SECAM
. In North America the original NTSC
525-line standard was augmented to include color transmission with slight slowing down of frame rate.
Throughout the 1960s, television sets used exclusively vacuum tube electronics. This resulted in relatively heavy and unreliable TVs. In addition, vacuum tubes were poorly-suited to color television, as it required a large amount of tubes which caused further reliability problems. Because vacuum tubes only allowed for very simple NTSC/PAL filtering, the picture quality of early color sets was rather poor. The tint control that is still found on NTSC televisions originally was meant to correct the color burst phase's drifting when channels were changed. In addition, the large number of vacuum tubes required for color prevented the use of it in portable TVs.
By the early 1970s, solid-state electronics appeared and quickly displaced vacuum tubes in color TVs (black and white sets generally continued to be tube-based). This allowed for significantly more reliable TVs and better picture quality. 1971 was the first year that sales of color TVs in the US exceeded B&W ones. In other countries, color was slower to arrive and did not become common in Western Europe until the '80s.
By 1965, the FCC began requiring UHF tuners in all TVs sold in the United States. In 1971, there were 170 UHF stations in the country, mostly low-power ones that carried local programming. Previously, UHF support from TV manufacturers was sporadic. Most sets did not come factory-equipped with them, and often merely included an empty slot in the cabinet where an optional UHF tuner could be installed.
During the 1970s, electronic tuners began appearing in high-end TVs in place of traditional dials, and they would gradually become standard along with remote controls. Remotes had first appeared in the 1950s with Zenith's Space Command Control, but these were mechanical devices that emitted a high-pitched audio frequency that the TV detected. The first electronic remote controls did not appear until the 1980s.
1980s TV developments mainly centered around the above-mentioned features. Electronic television tuners also went hand-in-hand with the rise of cable television. Analog comb filter
s, first introduced in the '70s on high-end sets, gradually became more common. Black-and-white TVs virtually disappeared from the American market except for 5-inch, battery-powered models.
The first LCD TVs were introduced in 1988, small, handheld devices with a B&W screen that could not display the full NTSC
resolution of 480-lines.
In the 1990s, 3-line digital comb filter
s appeared on high-end TVs. In addition, composite video
and S-video
inputs began appearing to support devices like video games and VCRs.
Analog broadcast television in the United States ended on June 12, 2009 in favor of Digital terrestrial television
(DTV) or digital-only broadcasting.
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
were initially explored using electromechanical methods to scan, transmit and reproduce an image. As electronic camera and display tubes were perfected, electromechanical television gave way to all-electronic broadcast television system
Broadcast television system
Broadcast television systems are encoding or formatting standards for the transmission and reception of terrestrial television signals. There are three main analog television systems in current use around the world: NTSC, PAL, and SECAM...
s in nearly all applications.
Electromechanical television
Photoconductivity
Photoconductivity is an optical and electrical phenomenon in which a material becomes more electrically conductive due to the absorption of electromagnetic radiation such as visible light, ultraviolet light, infrared light, or gamma radiation....
of the element selenium
Selenium
Selenium is a chemical element with atomic number 34, chemical symbol Se, and an atomic mass of 78.96. It is a nonmetal, whose properties are intermediate between those of adjacent chalcogen elements sulfur and tellurium...
by Willoughby Smith
Willoughby Smith
Willoughby Smith was an English electrical engineer who discovered the photoconductivity of the element selenium...
in 1873, the invention of a scanning disk
Nipkow disk
A Nipkow disk , also known as scanning disk, is a mechanical, geometrically operating image scanning device, invented by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow...
by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow
Paul Gottlieb Nipkow
Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow was a German technician and inventor.-Beginnings:Nipkow was a German of born in Lauenburg in Pomerania. While at school in Neustadt , West Prussia, Nipkow experimented in telephony and the transmission of moving pictures. After graduation, he went to Berlin in order to...
in 1884 and John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird FRSE was a Scottish engineer and inventor of the world's first practical, publicly demonstrated television system, and also the world's first fully electronic colour television tube...
's demonstration of televised moving images in 1926.
As a 23-year-old German university student, Paul Nipkow proposed and patented the first electromechanical television system in 1884. Although he never built a working model of the system, variations of Nipkow's spinning-disk "image rasterizer" for television became exceedingly common, and remained in use until 1939. Constantin Perskyi
Constantin Perskyi
Constantin Perskyi was a Russian scientist who is credited with coining the word television in a paper read at the International World Fair in Paris on 25 August 1900 at the 1st International Congress of Electricity which ran from 18 to 25 August. At the time, he was Professor of Electricity at...
had coined the word television in a paper read to the International Electricity Congress at the International World Fair
Exposition Universelle (1900)
The Exposition Universelle of 1900 was a world's fair held in Paris, France, from April 15 to November 12, 1900, to celebrate the achievements of the past century and to accelerate development into the next...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
on August 25, 1900. Perskyi's paper reviewed the existing electromechanical technologies, mentioning the work of Nipkow and others.
However, it was not until 1907 that developments in amplification tube technology, by Lee DeForest and Arthur Korn
Arthur Korn
Arthur Korn was a German-born physicist, mathematician and inventor, who was of Jewish ancestry...
among others, made the design practical. The first demonstration of the instantaneous transmission of still silhouette images was by Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris in 1909, using a rotating mirror-drum as the scanner and a matrix of 64 selenium cells as the receiver.
In 1911, Boris Rosing
Boris Rosing
Boris Lvovich Rosing was a Russian scientist and inventor in the field of television.Born to a family of Swedish descent, Rosing first envisioned a Television system using the CRT on the receiving side in 1907. Rosing filed a patent application in Germany on November 26, 1907 and—on the improved...
and his student Vladimir Zworykin
Vladimir Zworykin
Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin was a Russian-American inventor, engineer, and pioneer of television technology. Zworykin invented a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes...
created a television system that used a mechanical mirror-drum scanner to transmit, in Zworykin's words, "very crude images" over wires to the "Braun
Karl Ferdinand Braun
Karl Ferdinand Braun was a German inventor, physicist and Nobel laureate in physics. Braun contributed significantly to the development of the radio and television technology: he shared with Guglielmo Marconi the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics.-Biography:Braun was born in Fulda, Germany, and...
tube" (cathode ray tube
Cathode ray tube
The cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam onto the fluorescent screen to create the images. The image may represent electrical waveforms , pictures , radar targets and...
or "CRT") in the receiver. Moving images were not possible because, in the scanner, "the sensitivity was not enough and the selenium
Selenium
Selenium is a chemical element with atomic number 34, chemical symbol Se, and an atomic mass of 78.96. It is a nonmetal, whose properties are intermediate between those of adjacent chalcogen elements sulfur and tellurium...
cell was very laggy".
On March 25, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird FRSE was a Scottish engineer and inventor of the world's first practical, publicly demonstrated television system, and also the world's first fully electronic colour television tube...
gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette
Silhouette
A silhouette is the image of a person, an object or scene consisting of the outline and a basically featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black. Although the art form has been popular since the mid-18th century, the term “silhouette” was seldom used until the early decades...
images in motion, at Selfridge's
Selfridges
Selfridges, AKA Selfridges & Co, is a chain of high end department stores in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge. The flagship store in London's Oxford Street is the second largest shop in the UK and was opened on 15 March 1909.More recently, three other stores have been...
Department Store in London. AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
's Bell Telephone Laboratories transmitted halftone
Halftone
Halftone is the reprographic technique that simulates continuous tone imagery through the use of dots, varying either in size, in shape or in spacing...
still images of transparencies in May 1925. On June 13 of that year, Charles Francis Jenkins
Charles Francis Jenkins
Charles Francis Jenkins was an American pioneer of early cinema and one of the inventors of television, though he used mechanical rather than electronic technologies...
transmitted the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion, over a distance of five miles from a naval radio station in Maryland to his laboratory in Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, using a lensed disk scanner with a 48-line resolution.
However, if television is defined as the live transmission of moving images with continuous tonal variation, Baird first achieved this privately on October 2, 1925. But strictly speaking, Baird had not yet achieved moving images on October 2. His scanner worked at only five images per second, below the threshold required to give the illusion of motion, usually defined as at least 12 images per second. By January, he had improved the scan rate to 12.5 images per second.
Then on January 26th, 1926 at his laboratory in London, Baird gave what is widely recognized as being the world's first demonstration of a working television system to members of the Royal Institution
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
and a newspaper reporter.
Unlike later electronic systems with several hundred lines of resolution
Image resolution
Image resolution is an umbrella term that describes the detail an image holds. The term applies to raster digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail....
, Baird's vertically scanned image, using a scanning disk embedded with a double spiral of lenses, had only 30 lines, just enough to reproduce a recognizable human face.
In 1927, Baird transmitted a signal over 438 miles (704.9 km) of telephone line between London and Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
. In 1928, Baird's company (Baird Television Development Company/Cinema Television) broadcast the first transatlantic television signal, between London and New York, and the first shore-to-ship transmission. He also demonstrated an electromechanical color, infrared
Infrared
Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...
(dubbed "Noctovision"), and stereoscopic
Stereoscopy
Stereoscopy refers to a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. Both of these 2-D offset images are then combined in the brain to give the perception of 3-D depth...
television, using additional lenses, disks and filters. In parallel, Baird developed a video disk recording system dubbed "Phonovision
Phonovision
Phonovision is a proof of concept format and experiment for recording a mechanical television signal on phonograph records. The format was developed in the late 1920s in London by Scottish television pioneer John Logie Baird...
"; a number of the Phonovision recordings, dating back to 1927, still exist. In 1929, he became involved in the first experimental electromechanical television service in Germany. In November of the same year, Baird and Bernard Natan
Bernard Natan
Bernard Natan was a Franco-Romanian film director and actor of the 1920s and 1930s. He is said by one historian to be one of the earliest pornographic film directors and porn stars whose name was known to the public. After his alleged adult film career, Natan moved into mainstream cinema...
of Pathé
Pathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France.-History:...
established France's first television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
company, Télévision-Baird
John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird FRSE was a Scottish engineer and inventor of the world's first practical, publicly demonstrated television system, and also the world's first fully electronic colour television tube...
-Natan. In 1931, he made the first outdoor remote broadcast, of the Epsom Derby
Epsom Derby
The Derby Stakes, popularly known as The Derby, internationally as the Epsom Derby, and under its present sponsor as the Investec Derby, is a Group 1 flat horse race in Great Britain open to three-year-old thoroughbred colts and fillies...
. In 1932, he demonstrated ultra-short wave television. Baird's electromechanical system reached a peak of 240-lines of resolution on BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
television broadcasts in 1936 though the mechanical system did not scan the televised scene directly. Instead a 17.5mm film was shot, rapidly developed and then scanned while the film was still wet. On 2 November 1936 the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
began transmitting the world's first public television service from the Victorian Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace is a building in North London, England. It stands in Alexandra Park, in an area between Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green...
in north London. following alternate daily test broadcasts of the Baird and Marconi systems to the Radio Show at Olympia at the end of August It therefore claims to be the birthplace of television broadcasting as we know it today. The intermediate film system
Intermediate film system
The intermediate film system was a television process in which motion picture film was processed almost immediately after it was exposed in a camera, then scanned by a television scanner, and transmitted over the air...
was discontinued within three months in favour of a 405-line all-electronic system developed by Marconi-EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
.
Herbert E. Ives
Herbert E. Ives
Herbert Eugene Ives was a scientist and engineer who headed the development of facsimile and television systems at AT&T in the first half of the twentieth century. He was also a critic of the special theory of relativity, and attempted to disprove the theory by means of logical arguments and...
and Frank Gray
Frank Gray (researcher)
Frank Gray was a physicist and researcher at Bell Labs who made numerous innovations in television, both mechanical and electronic, and is remembered for the Gray code....
of Bell Telephone Laboratories gave a dramatic demonstration of mechanical television on April 7, 1927. The reflected-light television system included both small and large viewing screens. The small receiver had a two-inch-wide by 2.5-inch-high screen. The large receiver had a screen 24 inches wide by 30 inches high. Both sets were capable of reproducing reasonably accurate, monochromatic moving images. Along with the pictures, the sets also received synchronized sound. The system transmitted images over two paths: first, a copper wire link from Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
to New York City, then a radio link from Whippany, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
. Comparing the two transmission methods, viewers noted no difference in quality. Subjects of the telecast included Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
. A flying-spot scanner beam illuminated these subjects. The scanner that produced the beam had a 50-aperture disk. The disc revolved at a rate of 18 frames per second, capturing one frame about every 56 millisecond
Millisecond
A millisecond is a thousandth of a second.10 milliseconds are called a centisecond....
s. (Today's systems typically transmit 30 or 60 frames per second, or one frame every 33.3 or 16.7 milliseconds respectively.) Television historian Albert Abramson underscored the significance of the Bell Labs demonstration: "It was in fact the best demonstration of a mechanical television system ever made to this time. It would be several years before any other system could even begin to compare with it in picture quality."
Meanwhile in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, Léon Theremin
Léon Theremin
Léon Theremin was a Russian and Soviet inventor. He is most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments. He is also the inventor of interlace, a technique of improving the picture quality of a video signal, widely used in video and television technology...
had been developing a mirror drum-based television, starting with 16 lines resolution in 1925, then 32 lines and eventually 64 using interlacing in 1926, and as part of his thesis on May 7, 1926 he electrically transmitted and then projected near-simultaneous moving images on a five foot square screen. By 1927 he achieved an image of 100 lines, a resolution that was not surpassed until 1931 by RCA, with 120 lines.
On December 25, 1926, Kenjiro Takayanagi
Kenjiro Takayanagi
was a Japanese pioneer in the development of television. Although he failed to gain much recognition in the West, he built the world's first all-electronic television receiver, and is referred to as "the father of Japanese television".-Career:...
demonstrated a television system with a 40-line resolution that employed a Nipkow disk scanner and CRT display at Hamamatsu Industrial High School in Japan. This protype is still on display at the Takayanagi Memorial Museum in Shizuoka University
Shizuoka University
Shizuoka University isa national university in Shizuoka, Japan.The university consists of six faculties; Humanities and Social Sciences, Education, Informatics, Science, Engineering and Agriculture...
, Hamamatsu Campus. His research in creating a production model were halted by the US after Japan lost World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Mechanical scanning systems, though obsolete for the more familiar television systems, nevertheless survive in long wave infra red cameras because there is no suitable all-electronic pickup device.
Electronic television
In 1908, Alan Archibald Campbell-SwintonAlan Archibald Campbell-Swinton
Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton, FRS was a Scottish consulting electrical engineer. He described an electronic method of producing television in a 1908 letter to Nature.-Biography:...
, fellow of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
(UK), published a letter in the scientific journal Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
in which he described how "distant electric vision" could be achieved by using a cathode ray tube
Cathode ray tube
The cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam onto the fluorescent screen to create the images. The image may represent electrical waveforms , pictures , radar targets and...
(or "Braun" tube, after its inventor, Karl Braun) as both a transmitting and receiving device, apparently the first iteration of the electronic television method that would dominate the field until recently. He expanded on his vision in a speech given in London in 1911 and reported in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
and the Journal of the Röntgen Society. In a letter to Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
published in October 1926, Campbell-Swinton also announced the results of some "not very successful experiments" he had conducted with G. M. Minchin and J. C. M. Stanton. They had attempted to generate an electrical signal by projecting an image onto a selenium-coated metal plate that was simultaneously scanned by a cathode ray beam
Cathode ray
Cathode rays are streams of electrons observed in vacuum tubes. If an evacuated glass tube is equipped with two electrodes and a voltage is applied, the glass opposite of the negative electrode is observed to glow, due to electrons emitted from and travelling perpendicular to the cathode Cathode...
. These experiments were conducted before March 1914, when Minchin died, but they were later repeated by two different teams in 1937, by H. Miller and J. W. Strange from EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
, and by H. Iams and A. Rose from RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
. Both teams succeeded in transmitting "very faint" images with the original Campbell-Swinton's selenium-coated plate. Although others had experimented with using a cathode ray tube as a receiver, the concept of using one as a transmitter was novel. By the late 1920s, when electromechanical television was still being introduced, several inventors were already working separately on versions of all-electronic transmitting tubes, including Philo Farnsworth
Philo Farnsworth
Philo Taylor Farnsworth was an American inventor and television pioneer. Although he made many contributions that were crucial to the early development of all-electronic television, he is perhaps best known for inventing the first fully functional all-electronic image pickup device , the "image...
and Vladimir Zworykin
Vladimir Zworykin
Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin was a Russian-American inventor, engineer, and pioneer of television technology. Zworykin invented a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and Kálmán Tihanyi
Kálmán Tihanyi
Kálmán Tihanyi , was a Hungarian physicist, electrical engineer and inventor. One of the early pioneers of electronic television, he made significant contributions to the development of cathode ray tubes , which were bought and further developed by the Radio Corporation of America , and German...
in Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
.
On September 7, 1927, Farnsworth's Image Dissector
Image dissector
An image dissector, also called a dissector tube, is a video camera tube in which photocathode emissions create an "electron image" which is then scanned to produce an electrical signal representing the visual image...
camera tube transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, at his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco. By September 3, 1928, Farnsworth had developed the system sufficiently to hold a demonstration for the press. In 1929, the system was further improved by elimination of a motor generator, so that his television system now had no mechanical parts. That year, Farnsworth transmitted the first live human images with his system, including a three and a half-inch image of his wife Elma ("Pem") with her eyes closed (possibly due to the bright lighting required).
Meanwhile, Vladimir Zworykin
Vladimir Zworykin
Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin was a Russian-American inventor, engineer, and pioneer of television technology. Zworykin invented a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes...
was also experimenting with the cathode ray tube to create and show images. While working for Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1923, he began to develop an electronic camera tube. But in a 1925 demonstration, the image was dim, had low contrast and poor definition, and was stationary. Zworykin's imaging tube never got beyond the laboratory stage. But RCA, which acquired the Westinghouse patent, asserted that the patent for Farnsworth's 1927 image dissector was written so broadly that it would exclude any other electronic imaging device. Thus RCA, on the basis of Zworykin's 1923 patent application, filed a patent interference suit against Farnsworth. The U.S. Patent Office
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...
examiner disagreed in a 1935 decision, finding priority of invention for Farnsworth against Zworykin. Farnsworth claimed that Zworykin's 1923 system would be unable to produce an electrical image of the type to challenge his patent. Zworykin received a patent in 1928 for a color transmission version of his 1923 patent application, he also divided his original application in 1931. Zworykin was unable or unwilling to introduce evidence of a working model of his tube that was based on his 1923 patent application. In September 1939, after losing an appeal in the courts and determined to go forward with the commercial manufacturing of television equipment, RCA agreed to pay Farnsworth US$1 million (the equivalent of $13.8 million in 2006) over a ten-year period, in addition to license payments, to use Farnsworth's patents.
The problem of low sensitivity to light resulting in low electrical output from transmitting or "camera" tubes would be solved by Tihanyi beginning in 1924. His solution was a camera tube that accumulated and stored electrical charges ("photoelectrons") within the tube throughout each scanning cycle. The device was first described in a patent application he filed in Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
in March 1926 for a television system he dubbed "Radioskop". After further refinements included in a 1928 patent application, Tihanyi was awarded patents for the camera tube in both France and Great Britain in 1928, and applied for patents in the United States in June of the following year. Although his breakthrough would be incorporated into the design of RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
's "iconoscope
Iconoscope
The Iconoscope was the name given to an early television camera tube in which a beam of high-velocity electrons scans a mosaic of photoemissive isolated granules...
" in 1931, the U.S. patent for Tihanyi's transmitting tube would not be granted until May 1939. The patent for his receiving tube had been granted the previous October. Both patents had been purchased by RCA prior to their approval. The idea of charge & storage (with various and very different technological solutions) is still remained as a basic requirement for all type of modern image sensors until this day.
Development continued around the world. At the Berlin Radio Show in August 1931, Manfred von Ardenne
Manfred von Ardenne
Manfred von Ardenne was a German research and applied physicist and inventor. He took out approximately 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear technology, plasma physics, and radio and television technology...
gave a public demonstration of a television system using a CRT for both transmission and reception. However, Ardenne had not developed a camera tube, using the CRT instead as a flying-spot scanner to scan slides and film. Philo Farnsworth gave the world's first public demonstration of an all-electronic television system, using a live camera, at the Franklin Institute
Franklin Institute
The Franklin Institute is a museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one of the oldest centers of science education and development in the United States, dating to 1824. The Institute also houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial.-History:On February 5, 1824, Samuel Vaughn Merrick and...
of Philadelphia on August 25, 1934, and for ten days afterwards.
In 1933 RCA introduced an improved camera tube that relied on Tihanyi's charge storage principle. Dubbed the Iconoscope by Zworykin, the new tube had a light sensitivity of about 75,000 lux, and thus was claimed to be much more sensitive than Farnsworth's image dissector. However, Farnsworth had overcome his power problems with his Image Dissector through the invention of a completely unique "multipactor" device that he began work on in 1930, and demonstrated in 1931. This small tube could amplify a signal reportedly to the 60th power or better and showed great promise in all fields of electronics. A problem with the multipactor, unfortunately, was that it wore out at an unsatisfactory rate.
In Britain the EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
engineering team led by Isaac Shoenberg
Isaac Shoenberg
Sir Isaac Shoenberg was an electronic engineer born in Russia who was best known for his role in history of television....
applied in 1932 for a patent for a new device they dubbed "the Emitron", which formed the heart of the cameras they designed for the BBC. On November 2, 1936, a 405-line broadcasting service employing the Emitron began at studios in Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace is a building in North London, England. It stands in Alexandra Park, in an area between Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green...
, and transmitted from a specially-built mast atop one of the Victorian building's towers. It alternated for a short time with Baird's mechanical system in adjoining studios, but was more reliable and visibly superior. This was the world's first regular high-definition television service.
The original American iconoscope was noisy, had a high ratio of interference to signal, and ultimately gave disappointing results, especially when compared to the high definition mechanical scanning systems then becoming available. The EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
team under the supervision of Isaac Shoenberg
Isaac Shoenberg
Sir Isaac Shoenberg was an electronic engineer born in Russia who was best known for his role in history of television....
analyzed how the iconoscope (or Emitron) produces an electronic signal and concluded that its real efficiency was only about 5% of the theoretical maximum. They solved this problem by developing and patenting in 1934 two new camera tubes dubbed super-Emitron and CPS Emitron. The super-Emitron was between ten and fifteen times more sensitive than the original Emitron and iconoscope tubes and, in some cases, this ratio was considerably greater. It was used for an outside broadcasting
Outside broadcasting
Outside broadcasting is the electronic field production of television or radio programmes from a mobile remote broadcast television studio. Professional video camera and microphone signals come into the production truck for processing, recording and possibly transmission...
by the BBC, for the first time, on Armistice Day 1937, when the general public could watch in a television set how the King lay a wreath at the Cenotaph. This was the first time that anyone could broadcast a live street scene from cameras installed on the roof of neighbor buildings, because neither Farnsworth nor RCA could do the same before the 1939 New York World's Fair
1939 New York World's Fair
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair, which covered the of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park , was the second largest American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people...
.
Public broadcasting
Public broadcasting includes radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing and commercial financing.Public broadcasting may be...
in Europe from 1936 until 1960, when it was replaced by the vidicon and plumbicon tubes. Indeed it was the representative of the European tradition in electronic tubes competing against the American tradition represented by the image orthicon. The German company Heimann produced the Superikonoskop for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, later Heimann also produced and commercialized it from 1940 to 1955, finally the Dutch company Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
produced and commercialized the image iconoscope and multicon from 1952 to 1958.
American television broadcasting at the time consisted of a variety of markets in a wide range of sizes, each competing for programming and dominance with separate technology, until deals were made and standards agreed upon in 1941. RCA, for example, used only Iconoscopes in the New York area, but Farnsworth Image Dissectors in Philadelphia and San Francisco. In September 1939, RCA agreed to pay the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation royalties over the next ten years for access to Farnsworth's patents. With this historic agreement in place, RCA integrated much of what was best about the Farnsworth Technology into their systems.
In 1941, the United States implemented 525-line television. The world's first 625-line television standard was designed in the Soviet Union in 1944, and became a national standard in 1946. The first broadcast in 625-line standard occurred in 1948 in Moscow. The concept of 625 lines per frame was subsequently implemented in the European CCIR
CCIR
CCIR is a four-letter abbreviation that may stand for:*Campaign for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, a Washington, DC organization for immigrant rights...
standard.
Overview
Programming is broadcastBroadcasting
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...
by television station
Television station
A television station is a business, organisation or other such as an amateur television operator that transmits content over terrestrial television. A television transmission can be by analog television signals or, more recently, by digital television. Broadcast television systems standards are...
s, sometimes called "channels", as stations are licensed
Frequency allocation
Use of radio frequency bands of the electromagnetic spectrum is regulated by governments in most countries, in a Spectrum management process known as frequency allocation or spectrum allocation. Radio propagation does not stop at national boundaries...
by their governments to broadcast only over assigned channels
Channel (broadcasting)
In broadcasting, a channel is a range of frequencies assigned by a government for the operation of a particular radio station, television station or television channel. In common usage, the term also may be used to refer to the station operating on a particular frequency.-See also:*Broadcast...
in the television band. At first, terrestrial broadcasting
Terrestrial television
Terrestrial television is a mode of television broadcasting which does not involve satellite transmission or cables — typically using radio waves through transmitting and receiving antennas or television antenna aerials...
was the only way television could be widely distributed, and because bandwidth was limited, i.e., there were only a small number of channels
Television channel
A television channel is a physical or virtual channel over which a television station or television network is distributed. For example, in North America, "channel 2" refers to the broadcast or cable band of 54 to 60 MHz, with carrier frequencies of 55.25 MHz for NTSC analog video and...
available, government regulation was the norm.
In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
(FCC) allowed stations to broadcast advertisements beginning in July of 1941, but required public service programming commitments as a requirement for a license. By contrast, the United Kingdom chose a different route, imposing a television license fee on owners of television reception equipment to fund the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which had public service as part of its Royal Charter
Royal Charter
A royal charter is a formal document issued by a monarch as letters patent, granting a right or power to an individual or a body corporate. They were, and are still, used to establish significant organizations such as cities or universities. Charters should be distinguished from warrants and...
.
United Kingdom
The first British television broadcast was made by Baird Television's electromechanical system over the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio transmitter in September 1929. Baird provided a limited amount of programming five days a week by 1930. During this time, Southampton earned the distinction of broadcasting the first-ever live television interview, which featured Peggy O'Neil, an actress and singer from Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
. On August 22, 1932, BBC launched its own regular service using Baird's 30-line electromechanical system, continuing until September 11, 1935. On November 2, 1936 the BBC began broadcasting a dual-system service, alternating between Marconi-EMI's 405-line
405-line
The 405-line monochrome analogue television broadcasting system was the first fully electronic television system to be used in regular broadcasting....
standard and Baird's improved 240-line standard, from Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace is a building in North London, England. It stands in Alexandra Park, in an area between Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green...
in London, making the BBC Television Service (now BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
) the world's first regular high-definition television service. The government, on advice from a special advisory committee, decided that Marconi-EMI's electronic system gave the superior picture, and the Baird system was dropped in February 1937. TV broadcasts in London were on the air an average of four hours daily from 1936 to 1939. There were 12,000 to 15,000 receivers. Some sets in restaurants or bars might have 100 viewers for sport events (Dunlap, p56).The outbreak of the Second World War caused the BBC service to be suspended without warning on September 1, 1939, mid-way through a Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
cartoon. It resumed, again from Alexandra Palace, after the end of the war on June 7, 1946 showing the same cartoon. At the end of 1947 there were 54,000 licensed television receivers, compared with 44,000 television sets in the United States at that time.
The first transatlantic television signal was sent in 1928 from London to New York by the Baird Television Development Company/Cinema Television, although this signal was not broadcast to the public. The first live satellite signal to Britain from the United States was broadcast via the Telstar
Telstar
Telstar is the name of various communications satellites, including the first such satellite to relay television signals.The first two Telstar satellites were experimental and nearly identical. Telstar 1 was launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962...
satellite on July 23, 1962.
The first live broadcast from the European continent was made on August 27, 1950.
United States
The first regularly scheduled television service in the United States began on July 2, 1928. The Federal Radio CommissionFederal Radio Commission
The Federal Radio Commission was a government body that regulated radio use in the United States from its creation in 1926 until its replacement by the Federal Communications Commission in 1934...
authorized C.F. Jenkins
Charles Francis Jenkins
Charles Francis Jenkins was an American pioneer of early cinema and one of the inventors of television, though he used mechanical rather than electronic technologies...
to broadcast from experimental station W3XK in Wheaton Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
For at least the first eighteen months, 48-line silhouette images from motion picture film were broadcast, although beginning in the summer of 1929 he occasionally broadcast in halftones.
Hugo Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback , born Hugo Gernsbacher, was a Luxembourgian American inventor, writer, editor, and magazine publisher, best remembered for publications that included the first science fiction magazine. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with H. G...
's New York City radio station began a regular, if limited, schedule of live television
Live television
Live television refers to a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. From the early days of television until about 1958, live television was used heavily, except for filmed shows such as I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Video tape did not exist until 1957...
broadcasts on August 14, 1928, using 48-line images. Working with only one transmitter, the station alternated radio broadcasts with silent television images of the station's call sign
Call sign
In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign is a unique designation for a transmitting station. In North America they are used as names for broadcasting stations...
, faces in motion, and wind-up toys in motion. Speaking later that month, Gernsback downplayed the broadcasts, intended for amateur experimenters. "In six months we may have television for the public, but so far we have not got it." Gernsback also published Television, the world's first magazine about the medium.
General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
's experimental station in Schenectady, New York
Schenectady, New York
Schenectady is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 66,135...
, on the air sporadically since January 13, 1928, was able to broadcast reflected-light, 48-line images via shortwave
Shortwave
Shortwave radio refers to the upper MF and all of the HF portion of the radio spectrum, between 1,800–30,000 kHz. Shortwave radio received its name because the wavelengths in this band are shorter than 200 m which marked the original upper limit of the medium frequency band first used...
as far as Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, and by September was making four television broadcasts weekly. It is considered to be the direct predecessor of current television station WRGB
WRGB
WRGB, channel 6, is a television station located in Schenectady, New York, USA. WRGB is owned by Freedom Communications, and is the CBS affiliate for the Albany-Schenectady-Troy television market...
. The Queen's Messenger, a one-act play broadcast on September 11, 1928, was the world's first live drama on television.
Radio giant RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
began daily experimental television broadcasts in New York City in March 1929 over station W2XBS. The 60-line transmissions consisted of pictures, signs, and views of persons and objects. Experimental broadcasts continued to 1931.
General Broadcasting System's WGBS radio and W2XCR television aired their regular broadcasting debut in New York City on April 26, 1931, with a special demonstration set up in Aeolian Hall at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street. Thousands waited to catch a glimpse of the Broadway stars who appeared on the six-inch (15 cm) square image, in an evening event to publicize a weekday programming schedule offering films and live entertainers during the four-hour daily broadcasts. Appearing were boxer Primo Carnera
Primo Carnera
Primo Carnera was an Italian boxer, nicknamed the Ambling Alp, who became the world heavyweight champion.-Biography:...
, actors Gertrude Lawrence
Gertrude Lawrence
Gertrude Lawrence was an English actress, singer and musical comedy performer known for her stage appearances in the West End theatre district of London and on Broadway.-Early life:...
, Louis Calhern
Louis Calhern
Louis Calhern was an American stage and screen actor.- Early life :Louis Calhern was born Carl Henry Vogt on February 19, 1895 in Brooklyn, New York. His family left New York City while he was still a child and moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he grew up...
, Frances Upton
Frances Upton
Frances Upton was a Broadway actress and comedienne. She starred with Eddie Cantor in Whoopee! and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1928. She also had a featured role in the early talkie Night Work...
and Lionel Atwill
Lionel Atwill
Lionel Atwill was an English stage and film actor born in Croydon, London, England.He studied architecture before his stage debut at the Garrick Theatre, London in 1904. He become a star in Broadway theatre by 1918, and made his screen debut in 1919. He acted on the stage in Australia but was most...
, WHN announcer Nils Granlund
Nils Granlund
Nils T. Granlund was an American Broadway show producer, radio industry pioneer, a publicist for Marcus Loew who formed Loews Theatres and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer...
, the Forman Sisters, and a host of others.
CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
's New York City station W2XAB began broadcasting their first regular seven days a week television schedule on July 21, 1931, with a 60-line electromechanical system. The first broadcast included Mayor Jimmy Walker
Jimmy Walker
James John Walker, often known as Jimmy Walker and colloquially as Beau James , was the mayor of New York City from 1926 to 1932...
, the Boswell Sisters, Kate Smith
Kate Smith
Kathryn Elizabeth "Kate" Smith was an American Popular singer, best known for her rendition of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". Smith had a radio, television, and recording career spanning five decades, which reached its pinnacle in the 1940s.Smith was born in Greenville, Virginia...
, and George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
. The service ended in February 1933. Don Lee Broadcasting
Don Lee (broadcaster)
Donald Musgrave Lee was the exclusive west coast distributor of Cadillac automobiles in the early 20th century. In 1919 Lee purchased the Earl Automobile Works of Hollywood, California. Harley Earl, the son of the company's owner, was kept on as manager...
's station W6XAO in Los Angeles went on the air in December 1931. Using the UHF
Ultra high frequency
Ultra-High Frequency designates the ITU Radio frequency range of electromagnetic waves between 300 MHz and 3 GHz , also known as the decimetre band or decimetre wave as the wavelengths range from one to ten decimetres...
spectrum, it broadcast a regular schedule of filmed images every day except Sundays and holidays for several years.
By 1935, low-definition electromechanical television broadcasting had ceased in the United States except for a handful of stations run by public universities that continued to 1939. The Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
(FCC) saw television in the continual flux of development with no consistent technical standards, hence all such stations in the U.S. were granted only experimental and non-commercial
Non-commercial
Non-commercial refers to an activity or entity that does not in some sense involve commerce, at least relative to similar activities that do have a commercial objective or emphasis...
licenses, hampering television's economic development. Just as importantly, Philo Farnsworth's August 1934 demonstration of an all-electronic system at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia pointed out the direction of television's future.
On June 15, 1936, Don Lee Broadcasting began a one month-long demonstration of high definition (240+ line) television in Los Angeles on W6XAO (later KTSL
KCBS-TV
KCBS-TV, channel 2, is an owned-and-operated television station of the CBS Television Network, located in Los Angeles, California. KCBS-TV shares its offices and studio facilities with sister station KCAL-TV inside CBS Studio Center in the Studio City section of Los Angeles, and its transmitter...
) with a 300-line image from motion picture film. By October, W6XAO was making daily television broadcasts of films. RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
and its subsidiary NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
demonstrated in New York City a 343-line electronic television broadcast, with live and film segments, to its licensees on July 7, 1936, and made its first public demonstration to the press on November 6. Irregularly scheduled broadcasts continued through 1937 and 1938. Regularly scheduled electronic broadcasts began in April 1938 in New York (to the second week of June, and resuming in August) and Los Angeles. NBC officially began regularly scheduled television broadcasts in New York on April 30, 1939 with a broadcast of the opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair
1939 New York World's Fair
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair, which covered the of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park , was the second largest American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people...
. By June 1939, regularly scheduled 441-line electronic television broadcasts were available in New York City and Los Angeles, and by November on General Electric's station in Schenectady. From May through December 1939, the New York City NBC station (W2XBS) of General Electric broadcast twenty to fifty-eight hours of programming per month, Wednesday through Sunday of each week. The programming was 33% news, 29% drama, and 17% educational programming, with an estimated 2,000 receiving sets by the end of the year, and an estimated audience of five to eight thousand. A remote truck could cover outdoor events from up to 10 miles (16.1 km) away from the transmitter, which was located atop the Empire State Building
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...
. Coaxial cable was used to cover events at Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
. The coverage area for reliable reception was a radius of 40 to 50 miles (80.5 km) from the Empire State Building, an area populated by more than 10,000,000 people (Lohr, 1940).
The FCC adopted NTSC
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
television engineering standards on May 2, 1941, calling for 525 lines of vertical resolution, 30 frames per second with interlaced scanning, 60 fields per second, and sound carried by frequency modulation
Frequency modulation
In telecommunications and signal processing, frequency modulation conveys information over a carrier wave by varying its instantaneous frequency. This contrasts with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier is varied while its frequency remains constant...
. Sets sold since 1939 which were built for slightly lower resolution could still be adjusted to receive the new standard. (Dunlap, p31). The FCC saw television ready for commercial licensing, and the first such licenses were issued to NBC and CBS owned stations in New York on July 1, 1941, followed by Philco
Philco
Philco, the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company , was a pioneer in early battery, radio, and television production as well as former employer of Philo Farnsworth, inventor of cathode ray tube television...
's station WPTZ
KYW-TV
KYW-TV, virtual channel 3, is an owned and operated television station of the CBS Television Network, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. KYW-TV shares a studio facility with its sister station, CW flagship WPSG just north of Center City Philadelphia...
in Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
. The first advertising to appear on American television occurred on the afternoon of July 1, 1941 when New York NBC station WNBT, now WNBC
WNBC
WNBC, virtual channel 4 , is the flagship station of the NBC television network, located in New York City. WNBC's studios are co-located with NBC corporate headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan...
, broadcast a test pattern modified to look like a clock, with the words "Bulova Watch Time" in the lower right quadrant. Picture at: http://www.earlytelevision.org/images/rca_bulova_ad-1.jpg link title The image appeared just prior to that afternoon's telecast of a Brooklyn Dodgers game live from Ebbets Field. After the U.S. entry into World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the FCC reduced the required minimum air time for commercial television stations from 15 hours per week to 4 hours. Most TV stations suspended broadcasting. On the few that remained, programs included entertainment such as boxing and plays, events at Madison Square Garden, and illustrated war news as well as training for air raid wardens and first aid providers. In 1942, there were 5,000 sets in operation, but production of new TVs, radios, and other broadcasting equipment for civilian purposes was suspended from April 1942 to August 1945 (Dunlap).
By 1947, when there were 40 million radios in the U.S., there were about 44,000 television sets (with probably 30,000 in the New York area). Regular network television
Television network
A television network is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, whereby a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay TV providers. Until the mid-1980s, television programming in most countries of the world was dominated by a small...
broadcasts began on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
on a three-station network linking New York with the Capital District and Philadelphia in 1944; on the DuMont Television Network
DuMont Television Network
The DuMont Television Network, also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont, Du Mont, or Dumont was one of the world's pioneer commercial television networks, rivalling NBC for the distinction of being first overall. It began operation in the United States in 1946. It was owned by DuMont...
in 1946, and on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
and ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
in 1948. By 1949, the networks stretched from New York to the Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
, and by 1951 to the West Coast. Commercial color television
Color television
Color television is part of the history of television, the technology of television and practices associated with television's transmission of moving images in color video....
broadcasts began on CBS in 1951 with a field-sequential color system
Field-sequential color system
A field-sequential color system is a color television system in which the primary color information is transmitted in successive images, and which relies on the human vision system to fuse the successive images into a color picture. One field-sequential system was developed by Dr. Peter Goldmark...
that was suspended four months later for technical and economic reasons. The television industry's National Television System Committee
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
developed a color television system based on RCA technology that was compatible with existing black and white receivers, and commercial color broadcasts reappeared in 1953.
Canada
The Canadian Broadcasting CorporationCanadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
(CBC) adopted the American NTSC
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
525-line B/W 60 field per second system as its broadcast standard. It began television broadcasting in Canada in September 1952. The first broadcast was on September 6, 1952 from its Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
station CBFT
CBFT
CBFT is the flagship station of Télévision de Radio-Canada, the French language television network of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Its studios and master control are located at Maison Radio-Canada in Montreal....
. The premiere broadcast was bilingual, spoken in English and French. Two days later, on September 8, 1952, the Toronto, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
station CBLT went on the air. This became the English-speaking flagship station for the country, while CBFT became the French language flagship after a second English language station was licensed to CBC in Montreal later in the decade. The CBC’s first privately owned affiliate television station, CKSO
CICI-TV
CICI-TV is a Canadian television station, broadcasting in Sudbury, Ontario. It is an owned-and-operated station of the CTV Television Network, and is the flagship station of that network's system in northern Ontario, CTV Northern Ontario....
in Sudbury, Ontario, launched in October 1953 (at the time, all private stations were expected to affiliate with the CBC, a condition that was relaxed in 1960–61 when CTV, Canada's second national English language network, was formed).
France
The first experiments in television broadcasting began in France in the 1930s, but the French were slow to employ the new technology.In November 1929, Bernard Natan
Bernard Natan
Bernard Natan was a Franco-Romanian film director and actor of the 1920s and 1930s. He is said by one historian to be one of the earliest pornographic film directors and porn stars whose name was known to the public. After his alleged adult film career, Natan moved into mainstream cinema...
established France's first television company, Télévision-Baird
John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird FRSE was a Scottish engineer and inventor of the world's first practical, publicly demonstrated television system, and also the world's first fully electronic colour television tube...
-Natan. On April 14, 1931, there took place the first transmission with a thirty-line standard by René Barthélemy. On December 6, 1931, Henri de France
Henri de France
Henri Georges de France was a pioneering French television inventor. His inventions include the 819 line French standard and the SECAM color system...
created the Compagnie Générale de Télévision (CGT). In December 1932, Bathélemy carried out an experimental program in black and white (definition: 60 lines) one hour per week, "Paris Télévision", which gradually became daily from early 1933.
The first official channel of French television appeared on February 13, 1935, the date of the official inauguration of television in France, which was broadcast in 60 lines from 8:15 to 8:30 pm. The program showed the actress Béatrice Bretty in the studio of Radio-PTT Vision at 103 rue de Grenelle in Paris. The broadcast had a range of 100 km (62.1 mi). On November 10, George Mandel
George Mandel
George Mandel is an American novelist and short story writer.A native of New York City, Mandel was educated at the Pratt Institute, The Art Students League of New York and The New School...
, Minister of Posts, inaugurated the first broadcast in 180 lines from the transmitter of the Eiffel tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
. On the 18th, Susy Wincker, the first announcer since the previous June, carried out a demonstration for the press from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Broadcasts became regular from January 4, 1937 from 11:00 to 11:30 am and 8:00 to 8:30 pm during the week, and from 5:30 to 7:30 pm on Sundays. In July 1938, a decree defined for three years a standard of 455 lines VHF (whereas three standards were used for the experiments: 441 lines for Gramont, 450 lines for the Compagnie des Compteurs and 455 for Thomson). In 1939, there were about only 200 to 300 individual television sets, some of which were also available in a few public places.
With the entry of France into World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
the same year, broadcasts ceased and the transmitter of the Eiffel tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
was sabotaged. On September 3, 1940, French television was seized by the German occupation forces. A technical agreement was signed by the Compagnie des Compteurs and Telefunken
Telefunken
Telefunken is a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft...
, and a financing agreement for the resuming of the service is signed by German Ministry of Post and Radiodiffusion Nationale (Vichy
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
's radio). On May 7, 1943 at 3:00 evening broadcasts. The first broadcast of Fernsehsender Paris (Paris Télévision) was transmitted from rue Cognac-Jay. These regular broadcasts (5 1/4 hours a day) lasted until August 16, 1944. One thousand 441-line sets, most of which were installed in soldiers' hospitals, picked up the broadcasts. These Nazi-controlled television broadcasts from the Eiffel Tower in Paris were able to be received on the south coast of England by R.A.F. and BBC engineers http://www.earlytelevision.org/raf.html link title, who photographed the station identification image direct from the screen http://www.earlytelevision.org/images/parisnazitransmitter.jpg link title
In 1944, René Barthélemy developed an 819-line television standard. During the years of occupation, Barthélemy reached 1015 and even 1042 lines. On October 1, 1944, television service resumed after the liberation of Paris
Liberation of Paris
The Liberation of Paris took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the surrender of the occupying German garrison on August 25th. It could be regarded by some as the last battle in the Battle for Normandy, though that really ended with the crushing of the Wehrmacht forces between the...
. The broadcasts were transmitted from the Cognacq-Jay studios. In October 1945, after repairs, the transmitter of the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
was back in service. On November 20, 1948, Mitterrand
François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
decreed a broadcast standard of 819 lines; broadcasting began at the end of 1949 in this definition. France was the only European country to adopt it (others will choose 625 lines).
Germany
Electromechanical broadcasts began in Germany in 1929, but were without sound until 1934. Network electronic service started on March 22, 1935, on 180 lines180 lines
180 lines is an early electronic television system. It was used in Germany after on March 22, 1935, using telecine transmission of film, intermediate film system, or cameras using the Nipkow disk...
using telecine
Telecine
Telecine is transferring motion picture film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in the post-production process....
transmission of film, intermediate film system
Intermediate film system
The intermediate film system was a television process in which motion picture film was processed almost immediately after it was exposed in a camera, then scanned by a television scanner, and transmitted over the air...
, or cameras using the Nipkow Disk. Transmissions using cameras based on the iconoscope
Iconoscope
The Iconoscope was the name given to an early television camera tube in which a beam of high-velocity electrons scans a mosaic of photoemissive isolated granules...
began on January 15, 1936. The Berlin Summer Olympic Games
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona, Spain on April 26, 1931, at the 29th IOC Session in Barcelona...
were televised, using both all-electronic iconoscope-based cameras and intermediate film cameras, to Berlin and Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
in August 1936. Twenty-eight public television rooms were opened for anybody who did not own a television set. The Germans had a 441-line system on the air in February 1937, and during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
brought it to France, where they broadcast from the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
.
The American Armed Forces Radio Network
American Forces Network
The American Forces Network is the brand name used by the United States Armed Forces American Forces Radio and Television Service for its entertainment and command internal information networks worldwide...
at the end of World War II, wishing to provide US TV programming to the occupation forces in Germany, used US TV receivers made to operate at 525 lines and 60 fields. US broadcast equipment was modified; they changed the vertical frequency to 50 Hz in accordance to the European mains frequency standard to avoid power line wiggles, changed the horizontal frequency from 15,750 Hz to 15,625 Hz a 0.5 microsecond change in the length of a line. With this signal, US TV receivers with only an adjustment to the vertical hold control had a 625 line (= 576 visual lines + 49 lines of non-visual synch and burst data), 50 field scan, which became the German standard. This AFN system, however, was not the later PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
standard native to Germany, as the displays themselves were not capable of displaying any more than the standard NTSC 486 visual lines, which effectively were even only 243 visible lines due to display-internal deinterlacing
Deinterlacing
Deinterlacing is the process of converting interlaced video, such as common analog television signals or 1080i format HDTV signals, into a non-interlaced form....
by means of alternatively discarding one field and applying line doubling on the result. Additionally, it still took until the 1960s for the PAL-specific YUV
YUV
YUV is a color space typically used as part of a color image pipeline. It encodes a color image or video taking human perception into account, allowing reduced bandwidth for chrominance components, thereby typically enabling transmission errors or compression artifacts to be more efficiently...
color system to be invented by Walter Bruch
Walter Bruch
Walter Bruch was a German engineer who invented the PAL color television system at Telefunken in the early 1960s. In Addition to his research activities Professor Bruch taught at Hannover Technical University. He was awarded the Werner-von-Siemens-Ring in 1975.-Biography:He was born at Neustadt an...
, with PAL operating at 576 visual lines.
Soviet Union (USSR)
The Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
began offering 30-line electromechanical test broadcasts in Moscow on October 31, 1931, and a commercially manufactured television set in 1932.
The first experimental transmissions of electronic television took place in Moscow on March 9, 1937, using equipment manufactured and installed by RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
. Regular broadcasting began on December 31, 1938. It was quickly realized that 343 lines of resolution offered by this format would have become insufficient in the long run, thus a specification for 441-line format was developed in 1940, superseded by a 625-line standard in 1944. This format was ultimately accepted as a national standard.
The experimental transmissions in 625-line format started in Moscow from November 4, 1948. Regular broadcasting began on June 16, 1949. Details for this standard were formalized in 1955 specification called GOST 7845-55, basic parameters for black-and-white television broadcast. In particular, frame size was set to 625 lines, frame rate to 25 frames/s interlaced, and video bandwidth to 6 MHz. These basic parameters were accepted by most countries having 50 Hz mains frequency and became the foundation of television systems presently known as PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
and SECAM.
Starting from 1951 broadcasting in the 625-line standard was introduced in other major cities of the Soviet Union.
Color television broadcast started in 1974, using SECAM color system.
Japan
In 1979, the Japanese state broadcaster NHK first developed consumer high-definition television with a 5:3 display aspect ratio. The system, known as Hi-Vision or MUSE after its Multiple sub-Nyquist sampling encoding for encoding the signal, required about twice the bandwidth of the existing NTSC system but provided about four times the resolution (1080i/1125 lines). Satellite test broadcasts started in 1989, with regular testing starting in 1991 and regular broadcasting of BS-9ch commenced on 25 November 1994, which featured commercial and NHK television programTelevision program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
ming.
Sony first demonstrated an wideband analog high-definition television system HDTV capable video camera, monitor and video tape recorder
Video tape recorder
A video tape recorder is a tape recorder that can record video material, usually on a magnetic tape. VTRs originated as individual tape reels, serving as a replacement for motion picture film stock and making recording for television applications cheaper and quicker. An improved form included the...
(VTR) in April of 1981 at an international meeting of television engineers in Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
. The HDVS range was launched in April 1984, with the HDC-100 camera, HDV-100 video recorder and HDS-100 video switcher all working in the 1125-line component video
Component video
Component video is a video signal that has been split into two or more component channels. In popular use, it refers to a type of component analog video information that is transmitted or stored as three separate signals...
format with interlaced video and a 5:3 aspect ratio.
Technological innovations
The first national live televisionLive television
Live television refers to a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. From the early days of television until about 1958, live television was used heavily, except for filmed shows such as I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Video tape did not exist until 1957...
broadcast in the U.S. took place on September 4, 1951 when President Harry Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
's speech at the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference
Treaty of San Francisco
The Treaty of Peace with Japan , between Japan and part of the Allied Powers, was officially signed by 48 nations on September 8, 1951, at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, California...
in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
was transmitted over AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
's transcontinental cable
Coaxial cable
Coaxial cable, or coax, has an inner conductor surrounded by a flexible, tubular insulating layer, surrounded by a tubular conducting shield. The term coaxial comes from the inner conductor and the outer shield sharing the same geometric axis...
and microwave radio relay system to broadcast stations in local markets.
The first live coast-to-coast commercial television broadcast in the U.S. took place on November 18, 1951 during the premiere of CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
's See It Now
See It Now
See It Now is an American newsmagazine and documentary series broadcast by CBS from 1951 to 1958. It was created by Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly, Murrow being the host of the show. From 1952 to 1957, See It Now won four Emmy Awards and was nominated three times...
, which showed a split-screen view of the Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River...
in New York City and the Golden Gate Bridge
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, the structure links the city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to...
in San Francisco. In 1958, the CBC
CBC Television
CBC Television is a Canadian television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster.Although the CBC is supported by public funding, the television network supplements this funding with commercial advertising revenue, in contrast to CBC Radio which are...
completed the longest television network in the world, from Sydney, Nova Scotia
Sydney, Nova Scotia
Sydney is a Canadian urban community in the province of Nova Scotia. It is situated on the east coast of Cape Breton Island and is administratively part of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality....
to Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
. Reportedly, the first continuous live broadcast of a "breaking" news story in the world was conducted by the CBC during the Springhill Mining Disaster
Springhill mining disaster
The term Springhill mining disaster can refer to any of three separate Canadian mining disasters which occurred in 1891, 1956, and 1958 in different mines within the Springhill coalfield, near the town of Springhill in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia....
, which began on October 23 of that year.
The development of cable and satellite television
Satellite television
Satellite television is television programming delivered by the means of communications satellite and received by an outdoor antenna, usually a parabolic mirror generally referred to as a satellite dish, and as far as household usage is concerned, a satellite receiver either in the form of an...
in the 1970s allowed for more channels and encouraged businessmen to target programming toward specific audiences. It also enabled the rise of subscription television channels, such as Home Box Office (HBO)
Home Box Office
HBO, short for Home Box Office, is an American premium cable television network, owned by Time Warner. , HBO's programming reaches 28.2 million subscribers in the United States, making it the second largest premium network in America . In addition to its U.S...
and Showtime in the U.S., and Sky Television
British Sky Broadcasting
British Sky Broadcasting Group plc is a satellite broadcasting, broadband and telephony services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with operations in the United Kingdom and the Ireland....
in the U.K.
Television sets
In television's electromechanical era, commercially made television sets were sold from 1928 to 1934 in the United Kingdom, United States, and the Soviet Union. The earliest commercially made sets sold by Baird in the UK in 1928 were radios with the addition of a television device consisting of a neonNeon
Neon is the chemical element that has the symbol Ne and an atomic number of 10. Although a very common element in the universe, it is rare on Earth. A colorless, inert noble gas under standard conditions, neon gives a distinct reddish-orange glow when used in either low-voltage neon glow lamps or...
tube behind a mechanically spinning disk (the Nipkow disk
Nipkow disk
A Nipkow disk , also known as scanning disk, is a mechanical, geometrically operating image scanning device, invented by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow...
) with a spiral of apertures that produced a red postage-stamp size image, enlarged to twice that size by a magnifying glass. The Baird "Televisor" was also available without the radio. The Televisor sold in 1930–1933 is considered the first mass-produced set, selling about a thousand units.
The first commercially made electronic television sets with cathode ray tube
Cathode ray tube
The cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam onto the fluorescent screen to create the images. The image may represent electrical waveforms , pictures , radar targets and...
s were manufactured by Telefunken
Telefunken
Telefunken is a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft...
in Germany in 1934, followed by other makers in France (1936), Britain (1936), and America (1938). The cheapest of the pre-World War II factory-made American sets, a 1938 image-only model with a 3-inch (8 cm) screen, cost US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
125, the equivalent of US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
1,863 in 2007. The most expensive model with a 12-inch (30 cm) screen was $445 ($6,633).
An estimated 19,000 electronic television sets were manufactured in Britain, and about 1,600 in Germany, before World War II. About 7,000–8,000 electronic sets were made in the U.S. before the War Production Board
War Production Board
The War Production Board was established as a government agency on January 16, 1942 by executive order of Franklin D. Roosevelt.The purpose of the board was to regulate the production and allocation of materials and fuel during World War II in the United States...
halted manufacture in April 1942, production resuming in August 1945.
Television usage in the United States skyrocketed after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
with the lifting of the manufacturing freeze, war-related technological advances, the gradual expansion of the television networks westward, the drop in set prices caused by mass production, increased leisure time, and additional disposable income. In 1947, Motorola introduced the VT-71 television for $189.95, the first television set to be sold for under $200, finally making television affordable for millions of Americans. While only 0.5% of U.S. households had a television set in 1946, 55.7% had one in 1954, and 90% by 1962. In Britain, there were 15,000 television households in 1947, 1.4 million in 1952, and 15.1 million by 1968.
For many years different countries used different technical standards. France initially adopted the German 441-line standard but later upgraded to 819 lines, which gave the highest picture definition of any analogue TV system, approximately double the resolution of the British 405-line system. However this is not without a cost, in that the cameras need to produce four times the pixel rate (thus quadrupling the bandwidth), from pixels one-quarter the size, reducing the sensitivity by an equal amount. In practice the 819-line cameras never achieved anything like the resolution that could theoretically be transmitted by the 819 line system, and for color, France reverted to the 625-line CCIR
CCIR
CCIR is a four-letter abbreviation that may stand for:*Campaign for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, a Washington, DC organization for immigrant rights...
system used by most European countries.
With advent of color television most Western European countries adopted PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
standard. France, Soviet Union and most Eastern European countries adopted SECAM
SECAM
SECAM, also written SÉCAM , is an analog color television system first used in France....
. In North America the original NTSC
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
525-line standard was augmented to include color transmission with slight slowing down of frame rate.
Throughout the 1960s, television sets used exclusively vacuum tube electronics. This resulted in relatively heavy and unreliable TVs. In addition, vacuum tubes were poorly-suited to color television, as it required a large amount of tubes which caused further reliability problems. Because vacuum tubes only allowed for very simple NTSC/PAL filtering, the picture quality of early color sets was rather poor. The tint control that is still found on NTSC televisions originally was meant to correct the color burst phase's drifting when channels were changed. In addition, the large number of vacuum tubes required for color prevented the use of it in portable TVs.
By the early 1970s, solid-state electronics appeared and quickly displaced vacuum tubes in color TVs (black and white sets generally continued to be tube-based). This allowed for significantly more reliable TVs and better picture quality. 1971 was the first year that sales of color TVs in the US exceeded B&W ones. In other countries, color was slower to arrive and did not become common in Western Europe until the '80s.
By 1965, the FCC began requiring UHF tuners in all TVs sold in the United States. In 1971, there were 170 UHF stations in the country, mostly low-power ones that carried local programming. Previously, UHF support from TV manufacturers was sporadic. Most sets did not come factory-equipped with them, and often merely included an empty slot in the cabinet where an optional UHF tuner could be installed.
During the 1970s, electronic tuners began appearing in high-end TVs in place of traditional dials, and they would gradually become standard along with remote controls. Remotes had first appeared in the 1950s with Zenith's Space Command Control, but these were mechanical devices that emitted a high-pitched audio frequency that the TV detected. The first electronic remote controls did not appear until the 1980s.
1980s TV developments mainly centered around the above-mentioned features. Electronic television tuners also went hand-in-hand with the rise of cable television. Analog comb filter
Comb filter
In signal processing, a comb filter adds a delayed version of a signal to itself, causing constructive and destructive interference. The frequency response of a comb filter consists of a series of regularly spaced spikes, giving the appearance of a comb....
s, first introduced in the '70s on high-end sets, gradually became more common. Black-and-white TVs virtually disappeared from the American market except for 5-inch, battery-powered models.
The first LCD TVs were introduced in 1988, small, handheld devices with a B&W screen that could not display the full NTSC
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
resolution of 480-lines.
In the 1990s, 3-line digital comb filter
Comb filter
In signal processing, a comb filter adds a delayed version of a signal to itself, causing constructive and destructive interference. The frequency response of a comb filter consists of a series of regularly spaced spikes, giving the appearance of a comb....
s appeared on high-end TVs. In addition, composite video
Composite video
Composite video is the format of an analog television signal before it is combined with a sound signal and modulated onto an RF carrier. In contrast to component video it contains all required video information, including colors in a single line-level signal...
and S-video
S-Video
Separate Video, more commonly known as S-Video and Y/C, is often referred to by JVC as both an S-VHS connector and as Super Video. It is an analog video transmission scheme, in which video information is encoded on two channels: luma and chroma...
inputs began appearing to support devices like video games and VCRs.
Analog broadcast television in the United States ended on June 12, 2009 in favor of Digital terrestrial television
Digital terrestrial television
Digital terrestrial television is the technological evolution of broadcast television and advance from analog television, which broadcasts land-based signals...
(DTV) or digital-only broadcasting.
Television inventors/pioneers
Important people in the development of TV technology in the 19th or 20th centuries.- Manfred von ArdenneManfred von ArdenneManfred von Ardenne was a German research and applied physicist and inventor. He took out approximately 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear technology, plasma physics, and radio and television technology...
- John Logie BairdJohn Logie BairdJohn Logie Baird FRSE was a Scottish engineer and inventor of the world's first practical, publicly demonstrated television system, and also the world's first fully electronic colour television tube...
- Guillermo González CamarenaGuillermo González CamarenaGuillermo González Camarena , was a Mexican engineer who was the inventor of a color-wheel type of color television, and who also introduced color television to Mexico....
- Alan BlumleinAlan BlumleinAlan Dower Blumlein was a British electronics engineer, notable for his many inventions in telecommunications, sound recording, stereo, television and radar...
- Walter BruchWalter BruchWalter Bruch was a German engineer who invented the PAL color television system at Telefunken in the early 1960s. In Addition to his research activities Professor Bruch taught at Hannover Technical University. He was awarded the Werner-von-Siemens-Ring in 1975.-Biography:He was born at Neustadt an...
(PAL television) - Alan Archibald Campbell-SwintonAlan Archibald Campbell-SwintonAlan Archibald Campbell-Swinton, FRS was a Scottish consulting electrical engineer. He described an electronic method of producing television in a 1908 letter to Nature.-Biography:...
- Allen B. DuMontAllen B. DuMontAllen Balcom DuMont also spelled Du Mont, was an American scientist and inventor best known for improvements to the cathode ray tube in 1931 for use in television receivers. Seven years later he manufactured and sold the first commercially practical television set to the public...
- Philo Taylor FarnsworthPhilo FarnsworthPhilo Taylor Farnsworth was an American inventor and television pioneer. Although he made many contributions that were crucial to the early development of all-electronic television, he is perhaps best known for inventing the first fully functional all-electronic image pickup device , the "image...
- Boris GrabovskyBoris GrabovskyBoris Pavlovich Grabovsky was a Soviet engineer who invented the first fully electronic TV transmitting tube .Boris Grabovsky was born on May 26, 1901 in Tobolsk, Siberia, where his father, a prominent Ukrainian poet Pavel Grabovsky was living in exile as a member of the Russian revolutionary...
- Charles Francis JenkinsCharles Francis JenkinsCharles Francis Jenkins was an American pioneer of early cinema and one of the inventors of television, though he used mechanical rather than electronic technologies...
- Siegmund and David Loewe, founders of Loewe AGLoewe AGLoewe AG is the parent company of the German Loewe group. The Loewe group develops, manufactures and sells a wide variety of electronic, electrical and mechanical products and systems, and specialises in the field of consumer and communication technology. The company was founded in Berlin in 1923...
in 1923
- Lubo Micic
- Earl MuntzMadman MuntzEarl William "Madman" Muntz was an American businessman and engineer who sold and promoted cars and consumer electronics in the United States from the 1930s until his death in 1987. He was a pioneer in television commercials with his oddball "Madman" persona – an alter ego who generated publicity...
- Paul Gottlieb NipkowPaul Gottlieb NipkowPaul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow was a German technician and inventor.-Beginnings:Nipkow was a German of born in Lauenburg in Pomerania. While at school in Neustadt , West Prussia, Nipkow experimented in telephony and the transmission of moving pictures. After graduation, he went to Berlin in order to...
- Constantin PerskyiConstantin PerskyiConstantin Perskyi was a Russian scientist who is credited with coining the word television in a paper read at the International World Fair in Paris on 25 August 1900 at the 1st International Congress of Electricity which ran from 18 to 25 August. At the time, he was Professor of Electricity at...
- Boris RosingBoris RosingBoris Lvovich Rosing was a Russian scientist and inventor in the field of television.Born to a family of Swedish descent, Rosing first envisioned a Television system using the CRT on the receiving side in 1907. Rosing filed a patent application in Germany on November 26, 1907 and—on the improved...
- Ulises Armand SanabriaUlises Armand SanabriaUlises Armand Sanabria was born in southern Chicago of Puerto Rican and French-American parents.-Career:...
- David SarnoffDavid SarnoffDavid Sarnoff was an American businessman and pioneer of American commercial radio and television. He founded the National Broadcasting Company and throughout most of his career he led the Radio Corporation of America in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his...
- Kenjiro TakayanagiKenjiro Takayanagiwas a Japanese pioneer in the development of television. Although he failed to gain much recognition in the West, he built the world's first all-electronic television receiver, and is referred to as "the father of Japanese television".-Career:...
- Léon ThereminLéon ThereminLéon Theremin was a Russian and Soviet inventor. He is most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments. He is also the inventor of interlace, a technique of improving the picture quality of a video signal, widely used in video and television technology...
- Kálmán TihanyiKálmán TihanyiKálmán Tihanyi , was a Hungarian physicist, electrical engineer and inventor. One of the early pioneers of electronic television, he made significant contributions to the development of cathode ray tubes , which were bought and further developed by the Radio Corporation of America , and German...
- Vladimir ZworykinVladimir ZworykinVladimir Kozmich Zworykin was a Russian-American inventor, engineer, and pioneer of television technology. Zworykin invented a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes...
Television museums
- The Paley Center for Media (formerly The Museum of Television & Radio)
- Early Television MuseumEarly Television MuseumThe Early Television Museum is a museum of early television receiver sets. It is located in Hilliard, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, USA.The museum has over 150 TV sets including mechanical TVs from the 1920s and 30s; pre-war British sets from 1936-39; pre-war American sets from 1939-41; post-war...
- Museum of Broadcast CommunicationsMuseum of Broadcast CommunicationsThe Museum of Broadcast Communications is an American museum that currently exists exclusively on the Internet and not in any physical capacity. Its stated mission is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform and entertain...
- National Media Museum
- National Australia Film and Archives Museum
- MZTV Museum of Television
See also
- List of years in television
- History of radioHistory of radioThe early history of radio is the history of technology that produced radio instruments that use radio waves. Within the timeline of radio, many people contributed theory and inventions in what became radio. Radio development began as "wireless telegraphy"...
- Video Active (European Research Project)
- How television works
- TelevisionTelevisionTelevision is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
- Television Hall of FameTelevision Hall of FameThe Television Academy Hall of Fame was founded by a former president of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the late John H. Mitchell , to honor individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to television....
- Golden Age of TelevisionGolden Age of TelevisionThe Golden Age of Television in the United States began sometime in the late 1940s and extended to the late 1950s or early 1960s.-Evolutions of drama on television:...
, c1949–1960 in the US - Archive of American TelevisionArchive of American TelevisionThe Archive of American Television is a division of the non-profit Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation that films interviews with notable people from all aspects of the television industry....
- Dunlap, Orrin E. "The Future of Television". New York and London: Harper Brothers, 1942.
- Lohr, Lenox, "Television Broadcasting". New York: McGraw Hill, 1940.
- Video monitor timelineVideo monitor timelineThis timeline deals with video monitors ranging from television sets, computer monitors and others.*1950s - first commercially marketed television sets. *1960s - first commercially marketed color television sets....
- Oldest television stationOldest television stationThis is a list of prewar television stations of the 1920s and 1930s that were among the first in the world. Most of these experimental stations were located in Europe , Canada and the United States...
- List of experimental television stations
- Timeline of the introduction of television in countriesTimeline of the introduction of television in countriesThis is a list of when the first publicly announced television broadcasts occurred in the mentioned countries. Non-public field tests and closed circuit demonstrations are not included....
- Timeline of the introduction of color television in countriesTimeline of the introduction of color television in countriesThis is a list of when the first color television broadcasts were transmitted to the general public. Non-public field tests and closed-circuit demonstrations are not included.Countries and territories which never had black and white television This is a list of when the first color television...
- Geographical usage of televisionGeographical usage of televisionThe geographical usage of television varies around the world with a number of different transmission standards in use and differing approaches by government in relation to ownership and programme content.-African networks and stations:...
- NTSCNTSCNTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
- PALPALPAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
- SECAMSECAMSECAM, also written SÉCAM , is an analog color television system first used in France....
- BBC ArchivesBBC ArchivesThe BBC Archives are collections documenting the BBC's broadcasting history.- Overview :The archives contain 1 million hours of media material dating back to the 1890s, with early material on wax cylinder. With other materials such as photos and written documents the archive contains 11 million...
- SonySony, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
Further reading
- Abramson, Albert. The History of Television, 1880 to 1941. (1987). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. ISBN 0-89950-284-9.
- Abramson, Albert. The History of Television, 1942 to 2000. (2003). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. ISBN 0-78641-220-8.
- Burns, R. W. Television: An international history of the formative years. (1998). IEE History of Technology Series, 22. London: IEEInstitution of Electrical EngineersThe Institution of Electrical Engineers was a British professional organisation of electronics, electrical, manufacturing, and Information Technology professionals, especially electrical engineers. The I.E.E...
. ISBN 0-85296-914-7. - Everson, George (1949), The Story of Television, The Life of Philo T. Farnsworth New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co,. ISBN 978-0405060427, 266 pages.
- Fisher, David E. and Marshall Jon Fisher. Tube: the Invention of Television. (1996). Washington: Counterpoint. ISBN 1887178171.
- Shiers, George. Early Television: A Bibliographic Guide to 1940. (1997). Garland Reference Library of Social Science. ISBN 0-82407-782-2.
- Meyrowitz, Joshua(1985). No Sense of Place, Oxford University Press, New York.
External links
Links related to the development or history of television- History of television - Includes an anthology of early texts on "seeing at a distance by electricity"
- Mechanical TV and Illusion Generators including a description of what mechanical TV viewing was like
- Television history — inventors including a timeline
- Technology Review - Who Really Invented Television?
- Who Invented Television - Reconciling The Historical Origins of Electronic Video
- Photos of early TV receivers
- Article describing development of the television
- Early television museum (extensive online presence)
- Ed Reitan's Color Television History
- Erics Vintage Television Sets
- Detailed timeline of communications media (including the TV)
- The History of Australian Television
- Video Active: Creating Access to Television History
- A Visit to Our Studios: a television program exploring the studios at Johns Hopkins University in 1951
- Archive of American Television (information and links to videotaped oral history interviews with TV legends and pioneers)
- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Archives
- History of West Australian Television
- MZTV Museum of Television & Archive
- Television Early Patents and Inventions
- Littleton, Cynthia. "Happy 70th Birthday, TV Commercial broadcasts bow on July 1, 1941; Variety calls it 'corney'", VarietyVariety (magazine)Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
, July 1, 2011. WebCitation archive.